My first soap or why rushing is the biggest mistake for beginner soap makers

The first pancake is always a flop, and in my case, it was soap.

The desire to try soap making appeared in my childhood, but I actually started when I took part in a school fair for the first time. I really wanted to make lots of different soaps and sell them. It was handmade, after all. I watched various masterclasses, bought molds, fragrances, base, and all sorts of extra bits (basically, I bought everything I saw the bloggers using). I came home, laid everything out, prepared the dishes, and started cooking.

At first, everything looked fine and nothing hinted at disaster.

Once the base melted, I poured some into a plastic cup and added food coloring. The color wasn't bright enough, so I added more, then more, and more. In short, the cooling blue base with dots of dry dye didn't look promising anymore, unlike at the beginning. But I started pouring it into the mold anyway. The thickened soap poured poorly, hardening on the fly and forming a "ladder" inside. That's when I realized it was all nonsense and started remelting it in a separate bowl.

I wanted to make beautiful soap so badly that a single color seemed boring, so I decided to combine two colors. I started pouring in thin layers, letting each one cool slightly—first blue, then transparent. When the mold was full, I put it in the fridge. An hour later, I decided to take it out of the mold to see. The layers hadn't bonded, and I ended up with 6 separate pieces of soap. Anyway, I need to look up how to do it properly and try again. And I was in such a rush, as if I'd be shot if I didn't finish. The story repeated itself, but the layers mixed more and more, leaving color streaks until it all turned into one colored mass.

And it didn't end there. I decided to make coffee scrubs and used instant coffee for it! Yes, you read that right, instant coffee.

I did everything according to a YouTube tutorial, melting the base in a water bath.

But for some reason, the coffee dissolved. (I don't even know why...), but I found a silver lining here—the smell.

Anyway, I finished the job, put it in the fridge, and took it out after about 30 minutes (my parents were coming home soon, I had to clean up, and what if it didn't work out again? This way I'd have time to try again). Everything seemed to have set, it looked interesting, and I went to test how it worked. Well, the color of the water and my hands was about the same as if I had taken coffee and washed my hands with it. I was very upset and didn't understand why I wasn't succeeding.

In the evening, I told my parents, and we made soap together. And here is the result.

My parents helped me understand that when starting something new, you shouldn't rush, otherwise nothing will work out.

Share your own failure stories in the comments.